This has been a tumultuous month for Republican Party politics. Daniel Horowitz commented, “the GOP-led House passed a budget bill and debt ceiling increase that countermands every principle they campaigned on when pursuing majority control of that chamber in 2010. The policy and political outcomes of this vote will be far reaching and gravely consequential.” The subsequent vote by the Senate and election of Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House are the latest victories of the ruling American duopoly. And with this action the hemorrhaging of the GOP, which has been growing in the grassroots since G.W. Bush’s administration, has now publicly moved into the national leadership of the GOP itself.

Tom Tancredo, former Congressman from Colorado, publicly announced the end of his affiliation with the Republican Party after the budget deal. “This decision has been incubating over the past 17 years, years of watching the downward spiral of the Party… The Boehner budget deal is the last straw, and enough is enough. I cannot any longer defend this transparently dishonest charade called the Republican Party. What I will do instead is join the largest political group in the nation, unaffiliated Independents. In Colorado, they outnumber both ‘major’ political parties.” So it begins – the conservative leaders who have fought for decades to bring their values and principles into actual governance are beginning to cast their vote of no confidence in the GOP with their feet.

Tancredo’s assessment of the GOP as a national political party is worth reading and sharing. Many who have joined the Constitution Party (CP) over the years have been on the receiving end of the treachery of the ruling duopoly. Howard Phillips, the CP’s founder and former official in the Nixon Administration, emphasized the necessity of building a political infrastructure to elect candidates who will defend the principles and values that we hold in common with Tancredo. He noted:

“I had to define and articulate a vision of victory. So I had to spend a lot of time thinking about what victory in political terms meant. And in a nutshell, I concluded that it meant Biblical justice, biblical jurisprudence — a return to the working understanding that we live under God’s law, that He is sovereign, that He is our Creator, and that we are one nation under God, a nation which must live by the rules that He makes.”

Second, that the federal government had to be tied down to the Constitution. It had to be limited to its delegated, enumerated functions. I concluded further, that in order to do that, we needed to have a political home of our own. The Republican Party was a house divided against itself, and could only offer the lowest common denominator in politics. Our hope for victory was through the strategy of a united plurality, rather than one of a divided majority. And that in order to do that, we had to start somewhere, building a party committed to those biblical, constitutional principles which by God’s grace could at some point bring a government to office.

The purpose of the Constitution Party of Georgiais to recruit, train, and support individuals who share the CP’s vision of victory, beginning in our local communities. I welcome the opportunity to work with activists and leaders throughout the state regardless of political party who share Phillip’s vision. Together as a united plurality we can build a new second major political party unified in its efforts to honor God, defend the family, and restore the Republic.